This blog was started on the 1st of May 2007 and aims to provide information about the birds of Islay.

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Wednesday 12th December

This afternoon, I had a phone call from Malcolm with a simple request to help out with the ringing of some Greenland Whitefronts that hat had been canon netted over in a field at Ballinaby, so off I went. The actual canon netting and ringing of the said geese was carried out by Carl Mitchell from Kingussie and Larry Griffin who both work for WWT and their work covers monitoring goose populations. Carl is based up at Kingussie in the Scottish Highlands while Larry lives near Dumfries and based at Caerlaverock. I had not realised before I went to help that this infact was only the 3rd time of ringing Whitefronts on Islay, with a total of only 30 geese being rung prior to today when a further 31 were caught and rung with BTO leg rings, davic rings on the other leg and also a neck collar to aid id. The last time ringing took place was in 1991 I believe. As part of Carl and Larry's work, 2 of the geese were fitted with radio transponders so their position can be logged every 4 hours. Once I have more information to hand, I will post on the blog for folk to follow their travels. Malcolm and Peter were also there helping out too. As a point of interest, James had 5 Whitefronts with collars earlier in the Autumn at Gruinart, and all these geese were rung at Loch Ken last year by Larry!